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The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XII, 2020

The greatest area of state land allocated for farming is managed by the
Agricultural Land Reform Office (ALRO). ALRO was established in the 1970s,
originally to address problems of landlessness and land shortage, reminding us

that land inequality in Thailand is longstanding. Very little private land was
reallocated to the poor under the program, however. Rather, ALRO mainly
established schemes in recently cleared forest areas, using the program to formalise
tenure and to provide in principle for an equal area of farmland for those allocated
plots in each scheme. The most recent figures indicate that 36.2 million rai are
held under ALRO title, accounting for 20.3% or 24.3% of farmed area, depending
on whether Land Development Department of Office of Agricultural Statistics
figures are taken for overall farmland (calculated from figures presented in
Laovakul (2020): Tables 6, 7 and 8). Much of the area currently managed by ALRO
was transferred by the Royal Forest Department during the 1990s in recognition
of the fact that large areas of the country’s forest reserves were treeless and
de facto farmland. In principle, there are no local issues of inequality, since allocation
SPK 4.01 land tenure documents is equal among recipients within each ALRO
scheme and is usually between 12 and 25 rai per family depending on the location

of the scheme. In practice, there are many inequalities, irregularities and associated
conflicts. Early on in their establishment, those allocated land previously deemed
to be held by larger landholders in the area faced strong pressures to compensate
the former “owner” informally (Hirsch 1990). There have been numerous
scandals whereby ALRO land in areas of high tourist or other development
potential has found its way into the hands of politicians, for example the Phuket
scandal in 1995 that contributed to the demise of the Democrat government of the
time (Fernquest 2010). More generally, there is a larger level of inequality in the
sense that farmers on ALRO schemes are subject to limitations on the rights to use
and dispose of land in comparison with full title holders, which serves to depress
land values on such schemes. In policy terms, this is sometimes seen as a kind of
protection to discourage land alienation and to keep land under cultivation,
but in effect it creates two tiers of landed citizenry – itself a dimension of
inequality. There are many cases where ALRO land has been bought and sold
informally, creating ambiguities of ownership when the name on the land
document is other than that of the deemed owner.

Some of the most conflictual cases around land are in forest areas,
including forest reserves and national parks, where farmers have no formal title.

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Philip Hirsch

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